In the art of dispensing fluidic ink objects as it applies to printing, there is a need for curing or drying the fluid ink object after it impinges onto the receiving media. Furthermore, when the receiving media is also spinning, the fluid ink object must be cured or dried within a short time period, such that it does not migrate, elongate or distort from its originally intended shape, due to the inherent and ancillary effects of the spinning media.
As referenced and incorporated herein, U.S. Pat. No. 6,264,295, by Bradshaw et al, issued Jul. 24, 2001, teaches mechanisms for reducing or eliminating distortion related to radial printing. “Radial printing,” defined therein, is the process of printing ink objects to spinning circular media, such as a CD. During radial printing, ink objects impinge upon the spinning media surface at the ink object's point of incidence.
In general, prior art traditionally addresses the issue of ink curing at a macroscopic, gross level, rather than at a microscopic, point-of-incidence level. Conventional mechanisms for ink curing, drying, and migration typically result in image distortion. Traditionally, inks are cured with techniques such as using heaters, irradiators, evaporators, air circulators or by ambient drying of the media, in which the media is undisturbed over a period of time. For example, aqueous inks are generally more suitable to drying at room temperature, since the evaporant, water vapor is typically neither toxic nor corrosive to the surrounding environment. Typically, an extra drying area, i.e., separation of the media from the printing location and time, is used in ink jet printers to allow for this process. Other inks, such as polymers, require irradiation by intense doses of ultra violet (UV) light, often creating unwelcomed excessive heat from the irradiance lamps. With traditional silk screening used to apply UV curable polymer inks, larger volumes of inks are used versus radial printing, thus creating higher concentrations of unwelcomed toxic outgases, necessitating this be done in industrial settings usually with exhaust fans to remove and treat the gases.
Other techniques include using drying fans to move air over a freshly inked surface; however, if air blasts are too intense, this method can also migrate the ink objects, causing distortion. Heaters usually irradiate a large portion or the entire area of the media surface with infrared (IR) energy, also often creating unwelcomed excessive heat from the IR source device. Since most radial printing is done in devices intended for offices or homes, reducing the unwelcomed side effects of these traditionally ink curing or drying becomes a more challenging design task when developing an integrated CD recording, radial printing device.
The process of implementing radial printing devices reveals new specific issues and problems when considering components used to traditionally cure or dry ink, such as:                (1) Too much heat is built up within the device, generated by the curing or drying element, due to the confined space of the relatively small packaging area within or in near proximity to a CD or DVD recording device;        (2) Air turbulence and eddy currents caused from the media spinning, especially induced by the near proximity of the print head hovering directly over the media surface; and        (3) Centrifugal force, resulting from the media spinning between 360 RPM at 1× CD spinning rates, to over 14,400 RPM and higher with increasing spinning rates of 40× or more.        
It would be desirable to reduce these effects:                (1) Unwelcomed excess residual heat from curing or drying device components;        (2) Ink object distortion caused by turbulence and eddy currents; and        (3) Ink object migration from their original point of incidence, caused by centrifugal force.        
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for improved curing mechanisms used during radial printing. Additionally, there is a need for curing mechanisms to solve the unique problems associated with curing a rotating media, such as a CD, housed within the recording device and during printing radially.